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British actress Natasha Richardson - Source: ONE News -
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Directors, actors and critics paid tribute to Natasha Richardson after her death overnight from a severe brain injury in a skiing accident in Canada earlier this week.
The 45-year-old, a member of Britain's Redgrave acting dynasty and an accomplished stage and screen performer, passed away in a New York hospital late on Wednesday.
Britain's bestselling daily tabloids the Daily Mirror and The Sun dedicated their front pages to the news, expressing shock felt by the family and wider public that what had appeared a relatively minor fall on the slopes had ended in tragedy.
In a statement released just before midnight London time, family spokesman Alan Nierob said: "Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha. They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time."
Richardson had been hospitalized in New York since Tuesday, surrounded by her husband, actor Liam Neeson, her two sons Michael, 13, and Daniel Jack, 12, and members of her immediate family including her mother, actress Vanessa Redgrave.
Film maker Ken Russell, who directed Richardson in the 1986 film Gothic, said the actress was "always poised, prepared, focused and very, very bright.
"Her beauty was golden," he wrote in The Times. "That's the word that keeps coming to mind ... She was one of the few modern actresses who was as smart as she was pretty, and as gentle as she was fierce."
Actress Judi Dench spoke of Richardson's "luminous quality".
"It's just been so shocking, really shocking and I hope that everybody in the family, quietly, can somehow pick up the pieces," Dench told BBC television.
In her blog, actress Jane Fonda recalled meeting Richardson as a girl on the set of Julia, the 1977 film for which Redgrave won her Academy Award.
"She was a little girl but already beautiful and graceful," Fonda wrote. "It didn't surprise me that she became such a talented actor ... It is hard to even imagine what it must be like for her family. My heart is heavy."
Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan, who starred with Richardson in the 1998 comedy The Parent Trap, called her "a wonderful woman and actress (who) treated me like I was her own."
Comparisons inevitable
Comparisons with her mother were inevitable throughout Richardson's career.
"She was so like her mother it was almost unreal, and Natasha Richardson never played down the similarity," theatre critic Michael Coveney wrote in The Independent.
But he also underlined differences between mother and daughter in their performances of the same stage roles.
Richardson followed Redgrave and her father, the late film director Tony Richardson, into a career on stage and screen in England and the United States. She won Broadway's Tony Award in the 1998 musical revival, Cabaret.
Richardson was injured on Monday when she fell on a beginners' slope during a private ski lesson at the Mont Tremblant resort, about 120 km north of Montreal.
A spokeswoman for the resort said she appeared to be in good condition after the fall, but her instructor called a ski patrol to take her to the bottom of the hill.
About an hour later, she complained of severe headaches and was admitted to a local facility before moving to a Montreal hospital where she was diagnosed with severe brain trauma.
Chris Chandler, neurosurgeon at King's College Hospital in London, said an apparently minor blow on the head could cause serious injuries.
"A blow to the head can cause a bruise or rupture a blood vessel that slowly swells, causing pressure to build up inside the skull," he said.
"If that pressure is not relieved it can kill."
